Equipment
October 10th
Shall we take a mobile phone? Sounds silly? I thought so to. But then I thought about it. The way I see it there are 4 options
1. Take a contract phone 2. Take a PAYG (Pay as you go) phone 3. Take a sim-free phone and buy cards as you go 4. Take nothing
1. People almost never take contract phones when backpacking for one simple reason - its too expensive. So I called my tarrif provider, 02, who continue to impress me. I asked them very simply, what was the absolute cheapest tarrif if I didn't want any inclusive minutes or texts. They said the cheapest was £10 a month and had 75 free minutes and 250 free texts. That would work out as £330 for the trip.
Hmmm. 02 also use 4 of your text messages for every 1 text sent from abroad, so we could actually text abit for free. I feel that there may be times when we are stuck and would be willing to pay £100 just to have a working phone in a pocket to call for assistance. Or, would be willing to pay all £330 for our family to contact us, incase anything happened at home.
2. PAYG is great, but not in the USA, where there are no Pay as you go phones. I guess American's don't want to have people running around with working phones they are unable to track the owners of.
3. This is basically free and we will be doing this as it takes up almost no room.
4. Requires no explanation.
So in short, it looks like we will do both 1 and 3. I don't think its a waste of money, I think even if we never need it, we'll look back and say "Wern't we lucky" rather than "What a waste"
October 21st
The Asus 1000H arrived today. I've seen it before in a number of shops but its nice to see it all new and shiney. It gets fingerprints all over it in seconds. I bought a 320GB drive for it (rather than the 500gb I had my eye on) as I read reviews suggesting that the 500gb had quite a high power consumption and was slower than the 320gb. I'm not even sure 500gb would have been enough for the whole trip anyway, so I decided not to worry about it.
Of course, the Asus 1000H doesn't have a CD drive, nor do I have a USB CD drive. I need to install windows onto the new drive. I decided to use Ghost. Alas, the Universe once more conspires against me and all 3 of my floppy drives wouldn't work with 4 different machines and 4 different floppy discs. All the drives would just continuously refresh the files rather than letting me do anything!
In the end, I had to plug the drive into a Desktop and install Windows that way. When going back in the laptop, none of the drivers were on there but I managed to get them all on. If I find a way to get Ghost working I may still image the machine again.
Battery life is a little uninspiring. 4.5 hours is OK but not the 7 hours I saw one reading in PC World on near-minimum screen brightness. I'll do some proper tests when I have time.
October 23rd
I've now read the Asus 1000H manual. Turns out theres a Ghost image on the disc. Don't I feel stupid. So I plugged the drive back into the desktop and imaged it from that disc. Works well. Some of the functions still don't seem right though, processor speed is stuck at 1.6Ghz even in Super performance or power saving mode and the screen resolution cannot be changed to 1024X768 compressed. I think some trawling of forums will be needed.
I did try the webcam though and I think it will be excellent for doing a video journel every day for the website. I'll investigate this over the next few days and speak to Dave about incorporating such a thing into the site.
November 11th
Looking around at Backpacks, I found the new Tamrac Adventure range, which combines a lower section for camera gear (with padded dividers) and a top section for clothes and general storage. They are designed as Daypacks but might proove suitable. Due to working every day and now busy full time at weekends sorting things I have no time to track down a place to take a look at them, so I bought both the Adventure 9 and 10 with the idea to return them if they are not suitable. They certainly look promising.
November 12th
The bags arrived and are indeed very good. The Adventure 9 is the ideal DayPack but seems abit small for a general bag for one of us. The Adventure 10 is near-perfect, just a little big for airline carry-on (which is now seeming like something to shoot for rather than something that we absolutley must have).
I did manage to pack both cameras and all the lenses into the lower section of the expedition 10 meaning that I could have half the pack for other items and Jackie could have a full pack for clothes and bits and pieces (things like a towl and first aid kit take up alot of space). Both packs have a compartment for a laptop which is well padded and means you don't need to take other things out your pack to access it. A cleve idea.
November 14th
Not one to give up, I re-packed the camera's into the lower compartment of the Adventure 9 and they fit! So we can have the camera's and laptop with us in a day pack, with enough room for a change of clothes or some food and use the other pack for just clothes and other bits and pieces.
November 23rd
With the date drawing nearer we are worrying about equipment abit. It seems we don't have enough room for what we want to take but I'm confident that it will work out. I am still remember the stories of people overpacking and trying not to get carried away.
